DNA technology provides major break in 2 Virginia cold cases

STAFFORD COUNTY, Va. - The family friend of a Virginia woman says there is a sense of relief now that authorities have arrested a suspect more than 30 years after her murder.

Marcia Krebs was 10 years old when her mother’s best friend Jacqueline "Jackie" Lard, 40, was killed on November 14, 1986 in Stafford, Virginia. Lard was working at Mount Vernon Realty in the 300 block of

Garrisonville Road and last seen that evening around 9 p.m., according to detectives.

Lard never made it home.

"It was sheer panic at the time," Krebs recalled Wednesday. "I don’t know who she [Krebs' mother] took the phone call from but whoever did, told her when they opened the office, there was evidence of a struggle. My mom was one of the very few people who is not an investigator who actually saw the inside of the office, so she saw what it looked like after the attack."

Both Lard and her car were missing, according to detectives. Blood and other evidence were collected from the scene before her body was found in Woodbridge the next day.

Krebs, who now works in real estate in New York, said Lard’s murder has shaped her career.

"I’m a buyer specialist. So, in that sense, I spend a lot of my time out showing properties to people I barely know by myself. There’s protocols I’ve put in my place at the very beginning of my career knowing it can happen in this industry to women who are working alone," she said. "I always think about Jackie and any other realtor who’s ever been abducted, abused, raped, or whatever doing this job. It’s been my soapbox, so to speak. I’m an educator at heart so when I’m teaching my colleagues and office and other colleagues that I might network with around the globe, I always talk to them about safety and trusting your instincts."

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This week, Stafford County authorities announced the arrest and indictment of 65-year-old Elroy Harrison as a suspect in Lard’s murder.

"I just as much appreciated it from the start of this case, that the evidence that was collected…the interviews that were documented, all 37 years. It was the evidence they collected 37 years ago that was able to identify a suspect today," Det. David Wood told FOX 5 Wednesday.

Wood said over the past three decades, detectives from both state and federal agencies followed up on countless leads and interviews. Numerous suspects and persons of interest were ruled out, and the case was moved to a ‘cold case’ status until Wood began working with Parabon NanoLabs, a Reston-based company that specializes in DNA phenotyping and genetic genealogy analysis.

"A number of witnesses described seeing white males. Composites were made, suspects of the white male. They pursued those leads. It wasn’t until DNA and Parabon took that DNA and created a composite of a Black male. We knew it for so many years, it needed to be shifted over here," Wood explained.

Harrison, who has lived in Stafford for the duration of the investigation, has also been linked to a 1989 cold case. The victim in the 1989 case was 18-year-old Amy Baker of Stafford, who was visiting family in Falls Church. She was murdered in March 1989, allegedly strangled by the suspect after leaving her car to seek help at a gas station after her car ran out of gas.

Krebs said she hopes the news of Harrison’s arrest brings Baker’s family some sense of closure, as it has brought some relief for her own family.

"Every couple of years, she [mother] would search the internet to see if anything new had come up. We lost touch with the Lard family after they moved away and then us moving away from Stafford too," she said. "Her [Jackie] charisma and generosity. She was one of the most outgoing people ever and she would do anything she could to help anyone. She was kind, generous, and just willing to do whatever to help anyone."

Harrison was indicted this week by a Stafford County grand jury including first-degree murder.